NFL scores big with fans, but the national pastime isn’t past its time

Baseball is slow, low-scoring and quiet—the opposite of the fast, loud and violent game of football. But is baseball really dying in the shadow of its flashier rival?

While football is undoubtedly very popular, the numbers show that the demise of the sport known as the national pastime has been considerably exaggerated.

Since it is spring and the pinstripes are finally out, let’s take a swing at another of America’s favorite pastimes: debating the popularity of Major League Baseball and the National Football League—and to make it interesting, let’s keep score.

If luring raw numbers of fans to stadiums is the best measure of success, baseball blows football away.

Last year, 73.7 million people attended professional baseball games. That’s less than the peak of 79.5 million in 2007, before the financial crisis siphoned off some fans, but the total number of people going to NFL games has never come close. Last year, only 17.6 million people attended professional football games, the high for the sport.

But wait! Total attendance ignores the fact that Major League Baseball teams play 162 games in the regular season—or 2,430 games total—compared with only 16 regular-season games for NFL teams, or 256 in all. So on a per-game basis, an average of 30,345 people attended each MLB contest, compared with 68,776 for each NFL game (usually in bigger stadiums).

Reports of baseball’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, as these fans in Kansas City, shown during last year’s American League Championship Series, might attest.
Photo:
Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Football has become the most popular sport in America by many metrics, with Green Bay Packers' devotees some of the most rabid in the sport.
Photo:
Mike Roemer/Associated Press

OK, let’s view the question from another perspective: the attention each sport commands.

The NFL season is short. The regular season enthralls the nation for a mere 17 weeks. It’s the sport equivalent of a raucous fling.

MLB by contrast inspires devotion. It absorbs the public’s attention for 180 days, a season twice as long as the NFL’s.

NFL games are largely confined to Sundays, with single games played on Mondays and Thursdays for most of the season. Baseball is played every day—often during the workweek. Yet on Tuesdays, the day with the worst attendance last year, baseball still, on average, pulled in 27,000 fans.

Point: MLB

If baseball wins for a devoted fan base, the NFL has the edge when it comes to money.

According to Forbes magazine, which compiles the information annually, the NFL’s revenues exceeded $9.5 billion in 2014, while MLB’s revenue was just over $7.8 billion. MLB isn’t hurting, but the winner here is unambiguous.

Point: NFL

So, which sport do people say they like better?

Since 1937, Gallup has asked survey participants which sport they prefer to watch. The question leaves a lot to the imagination. As Gallup editor in chief
Frank Newport
notes: “I might say my favorite sport to watch is football, but in fact, I don’t watch much football at all.”

That said, in 2013, the last time the question was asked, 39% of those surveyed said football is their favorite sport to watch, while only 14% said they favor baseball. Until the 1960s, baseball had the edge.

Pew Research Center takes a different approach in its poll. It asks whether fans followed the World Series or the Super Bowl very closely, fairly closely, not too closely, or not at all closely.

Twenty-three percent said they followed the Super Bowl very closely, while 16% said they followed the World Series very closely.

In some ways it is an unfair comparison. Following the World Series closely requires paying attention to a series of games played on seven different days, including weekdays. The Super Bowl is a single-elimination game played on a Sunday.

Point: NFL, on a technicality

When it comes to which game is viewed more, the NFL rules, according to statistics compiled by Nielsen. The biggest mismatch is the championship games.

Last year, the Super Bowl attracted an average of 112 million viewers, putting it among the most watched events in television history, many of which are Super Bowls. Meanwhile, only 13.8 million on average watched the World Series across seven telecasts.

The NFL also beat MLB on mobile devices. Fans spent 5.3 billion minutes on NFL Mobile, compared with 4.6 billion minutes on MLB At Bat, according to Nielsen. And on computers, NFL.com had an average unique audience of 3.3 billion, compared with 2.4 billion for MLB.com.

Point: NFL

More Numbers

Among markets with both professional football and baseball teams, MLB teams outranked the NFL in the number of adult fans who have watched, attended or listened to games in six cities, including Atlanta, Tampa, Detroit, Boston and New York, according to Nielsen.

When it comes to gambling, the NFL blows away MLB—and some people suspect this helps explain football’s popularity.

Last year, bettors wagered $1.75 billion on football in Nevada, compared with $721 million on baseball.

According to
Rodney Paul,
a sports economist and professor of sports management at Syracuse University, there is a statistically significant relationship between the volume of betting on football and television ratings for the sport.

“The level of interest in the gambling market before a game starts is a good predictor of what will happen with viewership when the game does actually start,” he says. “If gambling on the game is popular, viewership will be popular.”

Point: NFL

By most of these measures, the NFL comes out ahead—perhaps arguably in some instances. But as the figures show, baseball is far from dead.

Attendance is steady, revenue is strong, and fans spend substantial amounts of time on the game—statistics that don’t always get emphasized in the news media’s narrative about the Old Ball Game.

“Baseball is still very popular,” says
Sean Forman,
president of Sports Reference, a website devoted to sports statistics. “It’s just popular in a different way than football is.”